In the Name of the Father
by Lacrymosa
Summary: The events of one cold winter evening at Spinner's End: Eleven year old Severus Snape must make a horrifying choice that will affect him for the rest of his life.


Eileen Prince knelt on her kitchen floor, shielding her face from the blows. Evidently, she wasn't doing a very good job of it. Blood was coming out her nose first in gushes, then in small drips that stained the checkered floor. She had spent two hours cleaning it "without magic, you useless bitch!" that afternoon, and she knew she'd be spending another two tomorrow, providing she got out of this onslaught alive. "A likely story," she thought to herself disgustedly, as she rolled away from a drunken kick aimed at her stomach. Somehow the goddamned drunk had gotten her arm instead, and she involuntarily cried out in pain. Tobias Snape got down on a knee and drew her up to his level. His breath reeked of whiskey and he nearly missed her face with his first slap. She tried to move out of his way, wriggling out of his grip, but he caught her;

"Where's your bloody wand now?"

His voice was slurred, marked with an amazing hatred. Eileen bitterly remembered the wedding vows she'd taken almost twelve years before, that had bound her sacredly to Tobias Snape. What the hell had changed? Tobias had been overjoyed at the thought of being a father. Once little Severus had been born, Tobias was a doting father and a caring husband, at least until the minds had begun their yearly cutbacks. Lost in the shuffle, Snape had taken to searching halfheartedly for a job by day, and drowning his sorrows in scotch by night. It had escalated to the point where Eileen had installed a deadbolt on Severus' door, so that he would be spared his father's drunken rages.

Suddenly snapping back to the present, Eileen felt sick. Who was this monster, and for the love of Merlin, why her? She steeled herself as Tobias let go of her, dropping her to the ground, his disregarded rag doll. Without thinking she spat in his face, once, twice. He deserved it, the bastard did!

"You bloody little bitch," he drawled, a slow smile creeping across his pale features.

She felt her head hit something hard and nearly passed out from the impact. Tobias, thinking that this was the case left his seemingly unconscious wife bleeding on her kitchen floor, while he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a flask. While she watched this, Eileen thought of her son, presumably upstairs in his room, presumably shivering in a corner. The boy was eleven, a wiry skinny young thing with his father's features and his mother's eyes. Tobias had only begun to beat Severus a year ago, when he had received notice that his son was a wizard. Disgusted, Tobias had snuck in to the boy's room and beat him, so much so that Eileen had awoken and been forced to curse her husband out of his firstborn son's room. Since then, the deadbolt on Severus' door was nearly always locked, the boy cowering in fear at the very sight of his father, even on the rare occasion that he was sober.

The truth was that Tobias had been worried when he had learned of his son's abilities. Yes, his wife was magical, but she was also a woman. He had taken her wand away the moment he learned she was a witch. With it, she was stronger than he, but without it, as he had rendered her, she was but a defenseless woman who would obey him or suffer the consequences. Now, with the knowledge that Severus was also a wizard, Tobias had begun to worry. Severus was almost a man, and with wand or without, Tobias realized he no longer had the upper hand. If there was anything Tobias Snape hated, it was people undermining his power, or what he had left of it.

There was one way to describe eleven-year-old Severus Snape's bedroom, and that was dingy. Despite this, books were piled neatly by a single bed with a rickety frame. The paint on the walls had once been white, or so his mother had told him, but it had now peeled to a dirty brown. There were no photographs or drawings on the walls, just a calendar. Curiously, there was nothing marked on this calendar, except precisely drawn red crosses for each day that passed. At eleven years old, Severus was not a happy child. He was, at the time of his father's arrival, sitting on his bed rereading a letter he had received just a few months prior:

_Dear Mr Snape, _

We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl no later--

"You useless BITCH!"

His reading was interrupted by his father's yelling and the sick sound of his mother hitting the hard kitchen floor. He looked up, not wanting to move a muscle, afraid that his father would hear. He moved to his tiny window, and unlatched it, taking in a cold breath of night air. A voice in his head chided him; he had heard this voice before, but never so insistent, so…threatening.

_Severus, you can't actually be thinking of going away to that school, can you? Leaving your poor mum with that man! You should be ashamed of yourself, taking the coward's way out, you sniveling boy! _

He shook with rage, hearing his father slap his mother, listening powerlessly to Eileen's silenced sobs. He was a coward, it was true! Powerless and scared and sniveling. He was supposed to be magic, for Merlin's sake. He heard a muffled scream from downstairs. Why hadn't he stopped yet? Crumpling the Hogwarts letter, he rose quietly from his bed, trying to stifle the creaking and made his way carefully down the stairs. His father was standing over his mother, holding his flask and swaying slightly. It was as if he was appraising his handiwork, the sick bastard! His mother was lying on the kitchen floor, blood spattering the checkered tile. Severus thought she was unconscious, until he saw her open her black eyes to slits, and almost imperceptibly nod ad him, telling him to go back upstairs where he'd be safe.

_Quite the little coward, aren't you _the voice jeered. _Can't own up to your…responsibilities?_

Severus could stand it no longer. He descended the rest of the stairs, and pulled a knife out of an open drawer at his side. Tobias Snape could have sworn that the last thing he witnessed were his son's wild black eyes, his thin lips mouthing "coward."

Severus helped his mother up, helped her clean the blood off the kitchen floor. Mother and son were both shaking slightly, breathing heavily. Clutching one hand to her still-bloodied nose, she picked up a wooden spoon and resumed stirring the contents of a pot on the stove.

"Well Severus? Sha-shall you set the table for two then?"


End file.
